LOS ARRECIFES, Mexico (AP) — The sun has set and the clouds are washed in purple as Mauricio Contreras and his daughter Eunices go fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Eunices casts the heavy net for snapper, pollock or cabrilla while her father pilots their small boat.
Contreras, an anchor dangling from a silver chain on his deeply tanned skin, has been doing this for more than 40 years. But he fears the family’s main source of income is now at risk because of an underwater pipeline completed last year to import natural gas from the United States.
“When they started putting it in, it affected us because the boats were dropping explosives and you could hear it all the way down the shore,” Contreras recalls. Now that it’s operational, he worries about spills: “It’s a constant danger that will always be there, and it’s a risk to the entire fishing industry.”
The pipeline, known as the Southeast Gateway, was built by Canadian company TC Energy in partnership with Mexico’s state-owned power company CFE. It adds 700 kilometers (435 miles) to a line that now stretches from southern Texas to the state of Tabasco, where it supplies electricity to a major oil refinery. But its primary goal is to one day deliver gas to the Yucatan Peninsula when another pipeline expansion is completed.
The Southeast Gateway is part of a wave of projects that would allow Mexico, already the largest buyer of U.S. gas, to bring in even more for its own use and re-export to Asia and Europe. But it faces growing resistance from communities and environmental groups who say the strategy increases the use of a polluting fossil fuel, deepens dependence on the U.S. and jeopardizes Mexico’s climate commitments.
Resistance in Veracruz
More than 40,000 people in Veracruz make their living from the sea, including Contreras, who lives in a community where fishing is almost the only work. He joined residents of 15 coastal communities last year in a lawsuit over the pipeline that was rejected but is under attack.
They claim that their communities, mostly the Nahua and Nuntajiiyi indigenous peoples, were not consulted before construction began, as required by Mexico’s Constitution.
“We don’t agree with this gas pipeline megaproject because we were never informed about it. We were never consulted and therefore we don’t know the consequences it will have,” said Maribel Cervantes, an activist and teacher who joined the lawsuit.
The government claimed the Southeast Gate was a matter of national security and kept some information about it secret, including the exact route. President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year that it was important for natural gas to reach the area.
Greenpeace warned that dredging to bury the pipeline could affect deep-water reefs, which are home to many species, some not found in shallow reefs. Pablo Ramírez, Greenpeace Mexico’s energy and climate change program coordinator, also said methane leaks could affect ecosystems such as reefs. They support important species, including green sea turtles and nesting olives on the beaches of communities like Los Arrecifes.
In a video last September, TC Energy said experts “thoroughly analyzed the marine environment to ensure the route was designed to conserve ecosystems.” The Canadian company declined an interview but said the pipeline created 4,000 jobs during construction and met all federal requirements. According to him, the project “brings natural gas to southeastern Mexico for the first time, opening opportunities for economic and social development in one of the poorest regions of the country.”
Mexico’s natural gas powerhouse
Mexico’s push for U.S. gas dates back to a 2013 reform that opened its energy sector to private and foreign investment, said Víctor Ramírez of energy consultancy P21Energía. The goal was to reduce the use of more polluting fuels, such as oil and coal, and to take advantage of low US natural gas prices.
Now, as the U.S. seeks new markets for fracked gas from the Permian Basin in Texas, Mexico offers not only a strategic geographic position for re-exports, but also more favorable political conditions to reach markets the U.S. cannot easily access, said Wilmar Suárez, energy analyst at Ember.
In turn, Mexico can resell that gas to other countries at a profit, Suárez said.
Southeast Gateway currently supplies gas only to the $20 billion Dos Bocas refinery, one of the flagship projects of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the largest refinery in Mexico. But it could eventually transport more than 1.3 billion cubic meters of gas per day if the government’s ambitious plans go ahead.
These include the completion of another pipeline to connect the Southeast Gateway to a planned plant in Oaxaca that will convert the gas into liquid for transport to Asia. These plants burn some of the gas to fuel liquefaction, generating polluting emissions, said Claudia Campero of the Mexican nonprofit Climate Connections.
Liquefaction plants have drawn the most opposition in recent years. This includes the Saguaro project, a planned 800-kilometer (500-mile) gas pipeline from Texas to the fishing community of Puerto Libertad in Sonora. There, the US company Mexico Pacific wants to build a plant to liquefy 15 million tons of gas a year for transport to Asia.
Such shipping would pass through the Gulf of California, threatening whales because it is a key breeding area, Campero said.
The project is suspended due to lawsuits.
Mexico’s first liquefied natural gas export terminal began operating in 2024, but many more are planned. If all of these were online, Mexico would have eight, most along the Pacific coast, according to Global Energy Monitor. The US currently has nine.
Both Víctor Ramírez and Suárez said Mexico’s natural gas strategy now jeopardizes its energy sovereignty.
More than 60 percent of Mexico’s electricity comes from gas-fired power plants, and about 70 percent of that gas comes from the U.S. Fitch Ratings said last year that Mexico’s dependence on U.S. gas will continue to grow due to rising demand, insufficient domestic production and pipeline construction.
“It is very easy for the US to impose certain conditions on Mexico because it has a dominant position on gas supplies,” Suárez said.
The Energy Ministry did not respond to interview requests.
Climate commitments are at risk
Greenpeace’s Pablo Ramírez said completing all the pipeline projects would make it unlikely Mexico would meet its goal of cutting net carbon dioxide emissions by 31 percent to 37 percent by 2035. And Ember’s Suárez said the heavy focus on gas casts doubt on Mexico’s doubling — to 45 percent — of its electricity from renewables promised by Sheba.
Sheinbaum inherited most of the gas projects and must honor those commitments because funds have been invested, said Víctor Ramírez of P21Energia. But he found optimism in the Energy Ministry approving 20 private renewable energy projects in December.
Back in Maribel Cervantes’ backyard in San Juan Volador, far from where the powerful in Mexico City make energy policy decisions, she asked officials to consider communities like hers.
“As indigenous peoples, we demand that our right to autonomy and self-determination be respected,” she said. “We don’t want them imposing megaprojects on us.”
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De Miguel reported from Mexico City. Data journalist MK Wildeman contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.
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